It happened so fast: Vic Gundotra announced that he was leaving Google+ and suddenly, all hell broke loose! The ground cracked open, flames erupted and the sky become dark… And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

The Beginning

Elias carefully tucked his spiral notebook into his backpack, ensured he had a handful of extra pens and pencils and dutifully wrapped his Android tablet, first in its padded sleeve, then a sweater. Even though he still hadn’t gotten accustomed to using it, he certainly didn’t want anything to happen to it. After his girlfriend had saved for 6 months to buy it for him, he’d sooner die than have that happen.

The truth was, though, that he didn’t really care to be drug into the digital age. He’d heard enough horror stories about people whose identity had been stolen or their account hacked that he had no desire to change the way he’d always done things. Every time he typed his password when logging into that Facebook thing, he felt like he’d walked into a crowded room butt-naked.

Ever since his birthday, Ana had been badgering him about starting a blog and putting his marketing degree to good use. What in the world made her think he’d be willing to share what basically amounted to a diary with anyone that felt like reading it? What made her think he wanted to share his thoughts with anyone? For that matter, what made her think he had anything to say? Continue reading “Anonymity, Notoriety, Credibility and Authority”→

Most business relationships involve some level of parasitism, wherein one party derives benefit from the resources of the other. Ideally, there is benefit to both sides, which would be described as symbiosis. Sometimes, however, one side is simply providing support to the other, getting nothing in return. The relationship that we have with Google can sometimes become a classic example of such a parasitic relationship.

Most of us recognise the potential for mutual benefit from our relationship with Google, but some feel that Google gives very little in exchange for what it takes. From a high altitude viewpoint, I think Google offers quite a lot… but not on a silver platter.

Furthermore, I think that site owners, users and marketers that look realistically at their interactions with Google will acknowledge that there are really several different relationships at play. Each of those relationships should be evaluated independently, even though they usually overlap.

Benefits Google Offers to Us

Visibility

This can be somewhat vague, as it involves many factors. A site’s ranking for a specific search term can vary dramatically, due to relevance, personalisation, location, temporal issues and more. But all else being equal, Google offers the opportunity to have a page displayed in the SERPs. This is a very complex process and Google’s resources enable them to do for us what none of us could accomplish for ourselves on such a scale – open the door to targeted users. Continue reading “Have you Defined your Relationships with Google?”→

We’re doing our first Meld Hangout On Air tomorrow, April 9th, at 10:30AM, Pacific time. We’ll be discussing some of the recently highlighted issues with Google, specifically around linking practices and what is and isn’t recommended.

Come watch our first Hangout

Joining us will be Rand Fishkin of http://MOZ.com and Steve Gerencser of http://SteamDrivenMedia.com. Unfortunately, this HOA won’t be open attendance, but you will be able to listen in live and offer questions and comments. Afterward, it will be available here for viewing, if you can’t make it.

New Nine Inch Nails album – new post. In 2012 I wrote a post in Don Rhoades blog called “How NIN makes me a better SEO” based on “The Downward Spiral” album. I just celebrated my third SEO birthday, and I want to share some stuff about SEO, clients and general observations. This is for you, SEO. This is for you, client. This is for me as well. Thanks for reading.

The eater of dreams

Thinking is good. Over-thinking, not always. We proclaim new techniques, the “ultime guide to <insert topic>” and “X number of things you need to do for <insert topic>”. But the reality is that there is no one-fits-all solution for SEO problems of our clients. But one thing I don’t see around too much is to dream of something more for our clients. Dream of something beautiful and then try to realize it. We can be wrong for sure, but SEO does not necessarily mean “boring” or “geek”. Create some magic.

I am just a copy of a copy of a copy.

No, you can’t copy. It’s not me telling you as SEO. We all know that duplicate content is not good for your website. But your readers / customers are asking you to present something new, something different. How? Just look around you. Ask your friend. Ask your audience. Read something not related to your business. Push yourself harder.

Everywhere now reminding me I am not who I used to be; I’m afraid this has just begun consequences for what I’ve done.

Three years in SEO, and I’m still learning. I’m still learning that shit you create as an SEO will come around to haunt you. So, let’s be honest and say “no, I’m not going to do that” when clients ask for impossible things. Educate the client. One of the things I love about my job is being able to sit down and explain how SEO works and why your website is not working. I’m not 100% geek, I’m not an Excel maestro, I’m not a guru (or other stupid titles). I’m just a guy who knows something about SEO and can help with that. Continue reading “HESITATION SEO: THREE YEARS AS SEO.”→

CPC – Cost Per Click – If it takes one person one hour at a billable rate to update some code on your website, if that hourly rate is $100 and you gets 10,000 visits on your website from that SEO coding, your cost per click is one cent. This is also used in budgeting for paid media, PPC, BT or RT. Continue reading “SEO, ORM, PPC – What???”→

Recent penalties have had folks up in arms (again) over Google’s methods to control what it labels as “spammy”. Having fueled a bit of the ranting myself, I thought I’d try offering some observations that might help keep things in perspective.

To be fair, there are a lot of spammy practices in play, and most of them end up putting a lot of trash in the SERPs. And as a major frustration to a lot of site owners, those practices sometimes allow a spammy site to outrank a site that complies fully with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

So here are some of my observations on some of the often repeated statements that are floating around:

Anti-Google Complaint #1: Google Doesn’t Own the Internet

Google doesn’t pretend to own the Internet. They DO, however, own their search results. If you’re like me, with zero dependency on organic search, you can do whatever you please, without fear of it affecting your business.

But if you’re like the majority of my clients, dependent upon your visibility in search for a significant portion of your income, you don’t have that luxury. You need to play in the SERPs game, so you need to play by their rules. Fail to do so at your own peril.

Anti-Google Complaint #2: Google is Out to Get SEOs

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few weeks about penalties and what you should do to rank in Google. I thought the best way for me to address these issues was for me to just write a guest post.

I heard the word “nofollow” on my very first day as a link builder, and the word was spit out with the same vitriol people use to describe Crocs or people who keep the stickers on the brim of their baseball caps. Although I no longer do much link building, I’ve been in the internet marketing industry for almost two years now, and there’s never been a day where I haven’t encountered the word “nofollow.”

Before yesterday, “nofollow” was just a word and a concept, but now “nofollow” and I know each other. We’ve been intimate.

I’m the community manager for Linkarati, so any and all outside requests go through me first. Yesterday I got my first nofollow request.

Click to enlarge, sucka

As you can see, the person on the other end of the email was polite and pretty well-informed, so I set about implementing the nofollow code.

Now, I’m not a newcomer to HTML, but I’d never implemented a rel=”nofollow” before. Not once. No one has ever asked me to nofollow a link, and I’ve never been in a situation where I thought it was prudent to nofollow my own.